Media Pushes Lie That "Dallas and the South Killed JFK," When Oswald was a Marxist Communist from New Orleans

RUSH: So here we are, the actual 50th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy, and the Drive-Bys are in full anniversary mode today for a host of reasons. I'll tell you, no matter where you look, the focus is on how racist and bigoted and extremist Dallas was -- and, now today, they're even adding the whole South into the mixture, which everybody knows was the case back then. But they're linking it to the assassination of Kennedy.

This is what the left has done since he was assassinated. They've erased from their and everybody else's memories that a communist was the assassin. And they have replaced "a communist" with "America." America basically killed the president. And that has been a major turning point for the Democrat Party and the American left 50 years ago, when they really went full bore on blaming America, simply because they could not accept the fact that a brother communist had killed the president.

And the further point of all of this coverage is the same point that exists every day in the media, and that is to demonize conservatives, demonize the South -- I mean, if you just went by the news reports today, the whole city of Dallas got up on November 22nd, 50 years ago, to shoot Kennedy, that there was a race on, and Oswald just happened to get there first, but the whole city wanted Kennedy shot. It was so bad that the Dallas Cowboys were talking about it in their locker room all week, according to a show hosted by Bob Costas on an NBC cable network. Can you believe it? The Dallas Cowboys locker room was worried that Kennedy was going to be assassinated by right-wing kooks.

By the way, one of those right-wing kooks happened to own the Dallas Cowboys at the time. And a couple of right-wing kooks used to run the Dallas Cowboys at the time. Now it's just kooks that run the Dallas Cowboys. Just kidding. I actually like Jerry Jones and so forth. But it is amazing. The whole city of Dallas, oh, they just couldn't wait 'til that Friday morning. The whole city got up that day to shoot Kennedy. There was not a lone communist from New Orleans by way of Moscow. Nope. Dallas did it. And never mind all those people who, on a workday, lined the streets to wave and cheer as Kennedy drove by. Dallas did this. It was Texas and the rest of the south that killed Kennedy. Never mind that in 1960, Kennedy carried Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, West Virginia, Maryland, anywhere they could find dead people to vote, Kennedy carried the state, thanks to old Joe Kennedy, the father. I'm just kidding.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: You know, I've been thinking, too, about this question. Who asked me, "What was Kennedy's biggest legacy?" I've been thinking about it, and this is really it. This really, if you stop and think about it, is the signature achievement of JFK: The establishment of the modern-day, partisan, celebrity-worshiping media. That is the signature achievement: The establishment of the modern-day partisan, celebrity-worshiping, Democrat media.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: It is the 50th anniversary today of the assassination of President Kennedy. And again, the whole purpose of today is to blame conservatives. I'm not kidding you. It's amazing. No matter what network you watch, they've got people on who claim to have been there that day, reporters, editors, assignment editors. They've got people who were there in the aftermath of the assassination. Well, I've been there in the aftermath. I was there last year. I've been to Dealey Plaza. I've been to the window at the School Book Depository. I did a radio commentary from there when I was in Kansas City. I've been there.

I've been to the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination. And all these people, it's amazing to listen to 'em talk about what kind of place Dallas was, a hotbed of anti-black bigotry, anti-civil rights, madcap extreme conservative right-wingerism. And all this time it was a communist that killed the president. They're doing everything they can to ignore that and erase it. Southern Democrats with a hotbed of racism in that year. Southern Democrats, the old Dixiecrats, they were the racists. The Democrats ran the South back then. They didn't run Dallas, which is what has everybody on the left ticked off.

But I remember, I was there during the Republican convention, Reagan, it would have been '84. I worked for a radio station in Kansas City that sent crews to both San Francisco for the Democrat convention and to Dallas for the Republican convention. In fact, that's where I met George Will for the first time, in the massive media complex underneath the convention hall. I forget where it even was in Dallas. But the thing is, I knew that I was getting fired. I just knew it. I knew it was gonna happen. I can't tell you why. It was not something I surmised. I knew it. It was in the cards. In fact, I was shocked that they sent me.

I went down there with the morning crew and a couple other people. I was there to do commentary each day, which is eventually what got me fired. I decided to go to the Texas School Book Depository. I got together with a couple of guys who at the time were with KIRO in Seattle, "KIRO." They were there to cover Slade Gorton, who was the senator from Washington. That's all they cared about was what Slade Gorton was doing. Of course it figures, they were from Seattle, provincial coverage. I went with those three guys, and what I decided to do was walk the steps up there.

I'll tell you, it was really eerie. I walked the steps, and I had my little cassette tape recorder going the whole time. The commentary I did attempted to replicate in a 90-second, two-minute format, retrace Oswald's steps that day, and I ended at the window, which they did have set aside. It was a makeshift museum at the time. It's amazing, you know, when you see something on TV for years and then you go and see it in person, its perspective is all different. It was a much smaller, really tiny area.

They make a big deal of what a great marksman, whoever shot, would have to have been, because the limo was moving away from and downward at an angle and for the shot, for the old rifle was that being used, it had to have been a really great marksman, which Oswald was. But, I mean, it was an eerie thing to walk up those steps. They were back steps and they were dark in this building. And then get out on the sixth floor and walk to that corner window, which they had set up as though Oswald had just left. They tried to preserve it as it was as soon as Oswald left.

I couldn't help pausing because everybody remembers where they were when they first heard that it had happened. But the thing that people forget, Kennedy went to Dallas to shore up what was a hostile, anti-Kennedy Democrat faction in Texas. Kennedy was in real trouble reelection-wise.

Guess what? Gallup just hit 39%, 41% CNN, 37% CBS. The swing in the Gallup number just out today for Obama is 15. It's 39 approve and 54 disapproval in the Gallup poll. But Kennedy was in real trouble. That's why he went to Texas. He was scheduled to make a speech at the Trade Mart about free trade. The Democrats were afraid that he was gonna lose Texas unless the Democrats in Dallas came around, and that was even despite LBJ being on the ticket. There was really no love lost between those two guys, by the way. That's a little bit more well known than other aspects of this.

But if you try to run around today and say that the Kennedy presidency was nothing to write home about in historical and in real terms, you will get slaughtered, because the poor man has been martyred and is now, in surveys of historians, he's either number one or two greatest president ever, and I'm telling you, not even close. But you can't say that. (interruption) The Bay of Pigs? Well, you could talk about the Bay of Pigs. Outright, utter disaster. What was his signature achievement? I'll tell you what his signature achievement was. Jackie. His signature achievement was the family and the pictures and the photo-ops and his press conferences.

He made the press feel like they were on the inside. He laughed with 'em, he joked with 'em. That's why the Camelot PR campaign was able to work so well. His singular real achievement? It happened posthumously. I would say that those massive tax cuts that he proposed and that were passed later after he died. You can't say the Cuban missile crisis. We got our clocks cleaned on that deal, particularly in Turkey. (interruption) What? Well, I know. See, I've just stepped in it. I just blasphemed because the Hollywood portrayal of the six-day missile cruises is that JFK single-handedly averted a nuclear war.

The legend is that JFK, in his studly manliness, stood down, stood up, stared down the brute, the bully, Nikita Khrushchev and sent Khrushchev running back to Russia with his tail between his legs and the nuclear missiles that never got to Cuber. That's the legend. Can't deny it. That's the legend. The truth is something else. But what's the point? In this situation nobody wants to hear the truth. It's there for people that want to study it. It's been written about, the Kennedy presidency's written about accurately. But it is safe to say that there were serious questions about him being reelected. In fact, his reelection was a grave risk. What people who only know Camelot, what people don't realize is, during the time of his life and during his time at the White House, there was no Camelot.

Camelot was created after his death as a massive PR campaign that was led by Jackie and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Ted Sorensen and all the others that surrounded Kennedy in a slavish, sycophantic way in the White House. Vietnam War, just to show you, the Vietnam War which the sixties generation, that's the formative event in their lives, the Vietnam War is JFK. LBJ gets all the blame for it because he did ratchet it up, but it was JFK that took us there. JFK got the whole Vietnam War thing started. He was a fervent anti-communist. He was trying to stop the domino effect. But he has nothing to do with Vietnam in history. Nothing to do with it. There is no soil in the legacy of JFK. But the truth, you know, is another matter.

The truth is never going to permeate. It's one of these situations where the manufactured legacy satisfies everybody, makes 'em feel good. It's almost as though he was deserving of that, given that he gave his life for the country, being assassinated and so forth, so why nitpick it. "Rush, why tell people what really happened in the Cuban missile crisis? Why Blaspheme? You can't you just leave it alone? If the American people want to have a hero that stood up and stared down the Russians, don't take it away from 'em." And that's pretty much what it is.

But that's not what's happening today. What's happening today is just an extension of what happens every day. The right wing's responsible. Conservatives did it. And if they didn't do it, they wanted to do it. And if they didn't do it, they might have paid for it. And if they didn't pay for it, they were applauding it when it happened. Whatever they have to do to connect conservatives to this assassination is what many in the Drive-Bys have been doing all week. The New York Times, I shared with you a story from a couple days ago yesterday. It's one of those things can be very frustrating. The truth is out there, but it is nowhere near the surface. And it's a truth that a lot of people don't want to be bothered with.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: You know, I've been thinking, too, about this question. Who asked me, "What was Kennedy's biggest legacy?" I've been thinking about it, and this is really it. This really, if you stop and think about it, is the signature achievement of JFK: The establishment of the modern-day, partisan, celebrity-worshiping media. That is the signature achievement: The establishment of the modern-day partisan, celebrity-worshiping, Democrat media.